Feather – "Friends" (1970)

When we are friends

Digging each other

[NOTE:  I haven’t gotten very far with my Swedish death cleaning but I did sell most of my LPs shortly after the following post originally appeared in December 2018.  The lucky buyer was none other than Steve Lorber, the man behind the legendary “Mystic Eyes” radio show that was the inspiration for 2 or 3 lines.] 

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I have what most people would consider to be an unhealthy personal attachment to all the vinyl LPs I collected between the early 1960s (when my parents purchased a Magnavox console stereo) and 1990 (when I bought my first CD player).

A lot of those records are full of great music, but I could replace most (if not all) of them with digital recordings suitable for listening to on my computer on iPod.

I haven’t kept those records for 30 years, 40 years, even 50-plus years to listen to them.  (I do still have a stereo system complete with turntable, amplifier, and speakers, but I haven’t played an album on it in years.)

I kept them because of the memories that are triggered when I look at the covers of those albums – memories of where I was and who I was with and who I was when I played them.

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Like most people my age, I’ve accumulated a lot of flotsam and jetsam over the years.

My plan was to dive into cleaning out all that crap once I left my job, but I didn’t make much decluttering headway in my first year of retirement.  So one of my 2019 resolutions is to devote at least one hour a day to sorting through my possessions and either selling, giving away, or throwing away everything I don’t truly need.  

The Swedish call that “death cleaning” because the point is to spare your children or other family members or friends the unpleasant task of doing that after you’re dead.

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I did a mini-death cleaning a couple of years ago when my law firm moved to a new building.

I’m guessing I threw away at least 75% of what was in my old office.  As a result, my new office was tidy and uncluttered.  What little I brought with me was stored away in drawers or shelved.  

The only things on my desk were a spiral-bound calendar/organizer, a cup of pencils and pens, and a stapler.

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Cleaning out my old office wasn’t at all difficult because I didn’t care much about all the paper I had accumulated.  “When in doubt, throw it out” was my mantra.

My home is a whole different animal.  I have thousands of family photos and videotapes, boxes full of baseball cards, old stamps and coins I collected when I was a kid, hundreds of books, and hundreds of record albums.

After pawing through everything, I decided to start the decluttering process by getting rid of my LPs.  I knew it would be hard for me to get rid of some of those albums despite the fact that I will probably never listen to them again.  But I have no sentimental attachment to the majority of my records.

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So I created a spreadsheet and started entering the names of all my record albums.  The plan is to e-mail that list to a few used record dealers and see what kind of bids I receive.

So far, my list has over 300 albums on it.  Most of them are classic rock albums I bought when I was in high school or college.  I’m talking household names like the Rolling Stones, Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, but also less well-known favorites like Blue Öyster Cult.

I also have a fair number of rock albums from the 1970s and 1980s – including releases by Roxy Music, the Tubes, Elvis Costello, the Pretenders, the Ramones, and X.

I’ve got a few country-western albums as well, some Motown greatest-hits collections, and some miscellaneous compilation albums.

I have no idea how much money all these are worth, but I’ll find out pretty soon and let you know.

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I was pretty picky when it came to buying full-priced albums.  But my standards were a lot lower when it came to the records in the cut-out bins.  

I would often buy a low-priced cut-out that only had one good song on it.  (For you younger folks out there, a “cut-out” is a heavily discounted LP – usually one that didn’t sell well.  The name comes from the fact that the record companies punched a hole in the corner of the album cover to distinguish cut-outs from regular-price records.)

Back in the 1960s and 1970s, regular albums might retail for $4.99 or $5.99.  Cut-outs went for half as much or even less – I still have some decent cut-out albums that cost me only 33 cents at a discount store in my hometown.

(All the albums whose covers are featured in this post are from my collection of obscure cut-outs.)

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One of my deeply discounted albums is Friends, by the group Feather.  I bought it for the first track on side one – “Friends” – which was a minor radio hit in 1970.  (I don’t think I ever listened to the entire album, and I’m guessing it’s been more than 40 years since I heard “Friends.”  If I hadn’t found the album in a box in my basement while preparing to do my death cleaning, I may have forgotten it altogether.)

There’s not much about the record or the group on the internet.  But it seems that “Friends” made its first appearance on the Billboard “Hot 100” on May 30, 1970 – which just happened to be my 18th birthday.  It peaked at #79 a few weeks later, and then disappeared.

I can’t imagine I heard it on the radio more than a few times, but it had enough significance for me that I bought the album when I stumbled across it in a cut-out bin.  

I have a feeling that a girl had something to do with my feelings about the song – maybe I was sitting in the local Dairy Queen parking lot with her one early-summer evening when the song came on the radio and we had a moment.  (A very short moment, and a moment that didn’t really go anywhere . . . but a moment nonetheless.)

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“Friends” is a very good record.

Some reviewers thought it sounded like a Crosby Stills & Nash track.  It does feature close, upper-register CS&N-like harmonies, but it’s much tighter and more energetic than most of that group’s recordings.

There were a lot of smartly-arranged, well-produced pop records in the 1960s and 1970s, and “Friends” was one of them.  It was produced by J. R. Shanklin, whose real name was Wayne Shanklin.  (You can click here to read more about him.)

“Friends” is less than three minutes long, and every second counts.  Drummer Dan Greer’s performance is especially noteworthy – he knows all the tricks, and keeps the song moving forward.  

I had never previously noticed that there are four measures in 3/4 time at about 0:33 and 1:15 of the song, and it’s Greer’s drumming that makes the transition from 4/4 to 3/4 and back to 4/4 so seamless.

Click here to listen to “Friends.”

Youth Brigade – "It's Not My Fault" (1996)

I can't say who's fault it was 

But I'm sure that it's not me 

[NOTE: I had a hard time picking just one 2 or 3 lines post from November 2015 to feature in this month’s “28 Posts in 28 Days.”  Surprisingly, I picked one that is mostly about someone else instead of one that is mostly about me.]

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Mickey Rivers was the centerfielder and leadoff hitter for the “Bronx Zoo” Yankees teams that won the 1977 and 1978 World Series.  

Here’s a quote that’s attributed to Mickey, who was a real character:

Ain't no sense worrying.  If you have no control over something, ain't no sense worrying about it – you have no control over it anyway.  If you do have control, why worry?  So either way, there ain't no sense worrying."

That actually makes a lot of sense if you think about it . . . doesn't it?

Unlike Mickey Rivers, I worry a lot.  I worry mostly about things I have no control over.  That’s why I prefer to take care of things myself instead of relying on other people to take care of them.  

Just because something isn’t your fault is no guarantee that you won’t get blamed for it.  You often have to pay the price when someone else screws up.  I figure if I’m going to be held responsible for how something turns out, I’d rather do it myself than trust it to someone else.  

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My daughter Sarah works as an event planner for a large company that puts on trade shows and technical conferences at convention centers or large hotels around the country.

I can’t imagine doing her job.  The amount of planning required to put on a successful trade show is mind-boggling.  No matter how good a job the event planner does, there are always last-minute snafus that have to be handled on the fly.  

Those snafus usually aren’t the event planner’s fault . . . but they are always the event planner’s responsibility.  The buck usually stops there.

The last show that Sarah handled took place at a large and well-known Las Vegas hotel – the kind of place that hosts dozens of big trade shows each year.

Sarah got up at the crack of dawn the day before the event opened to meet with a dozen or so of the hotel’s department heads and make sure that everything was good to go for the conference.

But in the middle of that meeting she got a panicked text from a young woman who worked for her.

I’ll let Sarah tell the story:

In case you were wondering what being a conference planner really is like, here is the adventure I had at my last conference.  

One of the biggest exhibits at that conference was housed in a 70-foot-long trailer.  It was basically an enormous mobile kitchen that could be used to put on cooking demonstrations at trade shows and outdoor events.  

I spent hours confirming the measurements of the truck with the exhibitor and with the hotel to make sure it would fit into the hotel’s exhibit hall.  

The truck had to be the first thing into our exhibition space on Sunday, so we scheduled it to move in at 6 A.M.  But it broke down on its way to the hotel, and arrived three hours late.  

When the truck finally showed up at the hotel, I got some very bad news . . . the truck would NOT fit through the exhibit hall entrance.  

I had confirmed the exact dimensions of the truck and trailer and the hotel doors several times, and we should have had plenty of space.  But the CAD (“computer-aided design”) drawings the hotel had provided were wrong – the door opening was six inches narrower than the drawings indicated.

Also, the truck dimensions I had been given were off – the trailer was actually seven inches wider than I had been told.  The bottom line was that it wouldn’t fit through the doors.

I had to tell the owner of the truck, who had spent $30,000 on a sponsorship plus thousands more to get the truck driven across the country, that we might not be able to get it into the exhibit space.  

He freaked out, and started yelling: "YOU NEED TO GET THIS TRUCK IN HERE!  IT’S NOT MY PROBLEM, IT’S NOT THE HOTEL'S PROBLEM, IT’S YOUR PROBLEM!  YOU HAVE ONE HOUR TO FIGURE OUT A SOLUTION AND GET THE TRUCK IN HERE!” 

He wasn’t the only one who was upset.  All of our other exhibitors were waiting to move in and set up, and they were getting unhappy, too. 

One of the hotel employees pulled out a laser measuring tape, and we started making measurement.  It looked like that if we removed the exhibit hall doors, we could get the truck in – with clearance of about half an inch on either side.

The doors weighed about 600 pounds each.  Because it was Sunday, none of the hotel staff who might have been able to take the doors off were working.  Finally, I called the general manager of the hotel, who was at his wife's 50th birthday party.  I insisted that he call in his people and get the doors taken off.  

After a lot of discussion, the hotel finally removed the doors and we got the truck in.  There was a large  crowd watching by that time, and they all clapped and cheered when the driver managed to squeeze through the opening.  

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Don’t you just love a happy ending?

I'm in awe of the way Sarah was able to take care of this situation.  And I was struck by how cool, calm, and collected she was when she told me the story – she made it sound like it was all in a day's work.  (I'll never complain to her about my job again.)

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Youth Brigade is a Los Angeles punk band that was formed by brothers Mark, Adam, and Shawn Stern in 1980.  (Don’t confuse that Youth Brigade with the Washington, DC Youth Brigade, a “harDCore” punk band that formed at about the same time.)  

Click here to listen to “It’s Not My Fault,” which is the first track on their 1996 album, To Sell the Truth.

Click here to buy that recording from Amazon.

Wonder Stuff – "Escape from Rubbish Island" (2004)

Yeah, we're out of here
That is painfully clear

We'll make our escape

[NOTE: Not every post from the “Golden Age” of 2 or 3 lines – including this one, which was originally published in October 2017 – is a gem.  But at least I tried in those days.]

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This is the “farewell” e-mail I sent to everyone at my law firm on my last day there:

Today is my last day at Venable.

I started work here in March 1995, when my youngest child was only five months old.  I had been commuting from my home in the Washington suburbs to a job in Philadelphia every Monday morning and driving back home every Friday evening for a couple of years, and coming to work at Venable enabled me to see my family every day instead of just on the weekends.

It’s pretty simple to explain what Venable has meant to me and my family.  Venable paid for my four children to go to college and graduate school.  Venable paid for the house I’ve lived in since 1997.  Because of Venable, I have enough in my 401(k) to be able to retire at age 65.

I wish all of you continued success and happiness.  I’ll think of you often.

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An old law school friend had this to say after reading that e-mail:

I have to say that your retirement e-mail was pretty cold.  It was all about the easier commute and the money you made.  

Imagine your peers at the firm reading it.  How would they take it?  Imagine a young lawyer there reading it.  I could imagine him or her asking, “Is that all it’s about?”

The message my friend took from that e-mail is certainly not the message I intended to send.  

But when I sat down and tried to put into words exactly what I did mean, it turned out to be a lot more difficult than I thought it would be.  

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Literally speaking, it’s accurate to say that my e-mail “was all about the easier commute and the money you made.”  But many statements that are literally truthful are still misleading.

The point of getting a job closer to where I lived wasn’t to have an “easier commute."  It was that I didn’t have to spend four nights a week away from my family.  

As for the money I made at my law firm, it was important – not as an end, but as a means.   

I was almost 43 when I started working at Venable.  I had spent the previous three years as an in-house lawyer for a young direct-marketing company.  There was a chance that company would take off and I would make a lot of money from the stock options I had been granted.  But that was a very, very long shot.  

I had four kids at the time – the oldest was eleven years old, the youngest was five months.  I wasn’t interested in going all in and hoping I drew to an inside straight.  I needed a job I could count on to still be there five, ten, and fifteen years later.  

Venable provided such a job.  The firm grew slowly but steadily in my 22-plus years there.  I might have done better somewhere else, but I could have done a lot worse.  

My saying that what Venable means to me is a paid-off mortgage and the wherewithal to pay for college and grad school tuition may strike some as being a little meh.   But it was intended to express my gratitude for a job that enabled me to take care of my family.  

My ideas about what it means to be a man and a father – like a lot of my ideas – may seem wrongheaded or at least outdated to a lot of people.  Excuse me all to pieces for feeling this way, but I’ve always believed that a father’s highest priority should be to provide food and shelter and all the other necessities of life for his children.

Really good fathers do a lot more than that, of course.  But paying the bills is job one.   

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My kids are done with college, and they are all employed.  I’m glad that I’m in a position to continue to help them and their kids, but they don’t really need that help – they are self-sufficient adults at this point.  So now I can focus on enjoying my retirement.

My parents grew up during the Depression, and they were very aware that hard times could return.  So they spent as little money as they could and salted away the rest – mostly in certificates of deposit and savings bonds.  

I’m not as frugal as they were, but I’m pretty frugal.  Looking back, I wish I had indulged in a few more luxuries when I was younger and let the future take care of itself.  But that just wasn’t me.  I’m a deferred gratification kind of guy.

I made the maximum contribution to my 401(k) every year I worked at Venable, which left me with enough of a retirement nest egg that I felt comfortable walking away from my job at age 65.  If I live long enough, my decision to be more of a saver than a spender will have paid off.  

Of course, that’s a big “if.”  

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My friend’s e-mail asked whether a young lawyer who read my farewell message would wonder, “Is that all it’s about?” – the “that” meaning money.

The question of what my e-mail communicates to young lawyers is one I take seriously because my older son is a young lawyer at another large Washington law firm.

If the message he takes from my e-mail is that he should feel good about his job if it enables him to provide for his family and enjoy his golden years (does anyone still use that term?), I’m good with that.

Of course I hope that his work is intellectually satisfying, that he enjoys the company of his co-workers, and that he believes that his work makes the world a better place.  But that’s the icing on the cake – not the cake itself.

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Maybe I settled for too little from my career.  Maybe I should have been a writer or a musician or small-business owner or something else that I would have found more personally fulfilling instead of going to law school.  

Of course, it’s too late to do anything about that now.  I made my bed and I’ll continue to sleep in it.  (I usually sleep pretty well, although not always.)

It would be nice to have written a novel, or recorded an album, or built a successful business with my name on it.  I envy people who have accomplished such things.

But remember what Ecclesiastes says: “Vanity, vanity, all is vanity.”  Isn’t the desire to leave that kind of legacy simply vanity?

For better or worse, my most significant legacy will be my children and grandchildren.  Anything else that I leave behind pales in importance compared to them.

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With the possible exception of 2 or 3 lines, of course.

In Gilbert and Sullivan’s H.M.S. Pinafore, Sir Joseph – he who is “the monarch of the sea/the ruler of the Queen’s Navy/whose praise Great Britain loudly chants” – proclaims that “his bosom swells with pride” when he boards his flagship.

When it comes to my wildly successful little blog, I’ll match my swollen bosom with Sir Joseph’s any day of the week.

Not every 2 or 3 lines post is a gem – including today’s effort, which has been a struggle.  But instead of continuing to wrestle with it, I’ve decided to throw in the towel.  The more time I spend on this post, the worse it gets.  And I do three of these a week – I can’t continue flailing around indefinitely in the hope that I will eventually be touched by the muse.

As the saying goes, when you find your self in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

I’m not giving up entirely.  My friend’s e-mail raised some very important issues, and I’m going to continue to ponder them.  If I come up with anything worthwhile to say about them, you’ll be the first to know.  But for now, it’s time to move on.

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Wonder Stuff is one of the bands that I only know about only because I interviewed Yum Yum Tree’s Andy Gish a couple of years ago.  (Andy wrote and sang all the songs on that group’s excellent 2007 album, Paint by Numbers.)

Today’s featured song – which is from the group’s 2004 album of the same name – is my favorite Wonder Stuff track.  Click here to listen to a live version of “Escape from Rubbish Island.”

Click here to buy a solo recording of that song by the group's frontman, Miles Hunt.

Sandra Bernhard – "Manic Superstar" (1991)

I know what I want

But I just don't know

How to get it

[NOTE: I’m shocked by how old most of this month’s “Golden Decade” posts are – including this one (which was originally published on the first day of September 2015).  Whoever said “Tempus fugit” was certainly right.]

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Sandra Bernhard's "Manic Superstar" is a mashup of "Everything's Alright" (from Jesus Christ Superstar) and the great Jimi Hendrix song, "Manic Depression."

The late Jimi Hendrix

Jimi Hendrix was left-handed.  I am also left-handed.  Other than that, we have about as much in common as the two very dissimilar halves of "Manic Superstar."

For example, Hendrix was black, while I am white.

Hendrix was a fabulous guitarist, while I am a fabulous pianist.

Another difference between us is that JIMI HENDRIX IS DEAD.  I am not dead.

And there's this: Jimi Hendrix knew what he wanted but didn't know how to get it, while I don't really know what I want.

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The Board of Selectmen of Orleans, Massachusetts, knew what they wanted when it came to the hundreds of cormorants that were roosting on the power lines that spanned Cedar Pond – they wanted to get rid of them.

Roosting cormorants at Cedar Pond

And the selectmen thought they knew how to get what they wanted.  But it turns out that they couldn't have been wronger.

Why were the town officials trying to get rid of the cormorants?  Because they were pooping in the 15-acre pond.  That resulted in an increase in the pond's nitrogen and phosphorous content, which resulted in the pond becoming covered with algae.  (Yuck!)

The town wanted the local electric utility to put the power lines underground.  The estimated cost of doing that is $1.1 million, which would be passed on to the utility's customers.  (It's so easy to spend other people's money, isn't it?)

In the meantime, the geniuses on the Board of Selectman decided to pay the U.S. Department of Agriculture $6500 to scare the cormorants away by shooting fireworks at them.

A double-crested cormorant

I feel a little sheepish admitting that even though I've lived in Our Nation's Capital for my entire adult life, I didn't know that the U.S. Department of Agriculture is who you call when you need someone to go after pooping birds with pyrotechnics.

The USDA went after the fish-eating cormorants with "screamers" which they fired from kayaks.  ($6500 to shoot fancy bottle rockets at birds from kayaks?  I guarantee you that it wouldn't have taken more than ten minutes to find a dozen teenaged boys who would have been thrilled to do the job for free.)

Click here to see a short video featuring screamers.

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Unfortunately, things quickly went awry the first night the fireworks were used.

The Cape Cod Times reported that a local resident who was driving nearby when the USDA began blasting the birds posted on Facebook that his truck was hit by the fireworks:

“[S]everal sky rockets struck the side of my truck, including the glass of the passenger's window,” the person wrote.  “If I'd had the windows down like I normally do the rockets would've gotten inside and I'm pretty sure I'd have totalled my truck.”

It's hard to believe that something went wrong with this well-thought-out plan, isn't it?  After all, according to the Times, "[t]hree USDA officials were on the scene, including one who was specifically there to make sure nothing went wrong."

The following evening, the USDA resumed the bombardment of the poor cormorants, which did appear to put a serious dent in the number of birds roosting on the power lines.

USDA headquarters in Washington, DC

But the effect of the screamers was short-lived.  According to a woman described by the Times as an "Orleans resident and bird-counter," there were some 150 birds back on the wire a week after the fireworks assault. 

USDA launched its kayaks and lit off another salvo of screamers the next night, which reduced the population of Cedar Pond cormorants significantly.  Unfortunately, observers said that the number of birds roosting on a power line over nearby Little Depot Pond had increased by a like amount.  (As my late grandmother used to say, "Six of one, a half-dozen of the other.")  

The Cape Cod Rail Trail goes right by Little Depot Pond.  When I rode my bike past the pond, there were a fair number of cormorants sitting on the power lines over that pond:  

Roosting cormorants at Little Depot Pond

One local resident complained to the Times that the fireworks were terrifying her pet dog.  "He just trembles and tries to hide," she told a reporter.  

The disgruntled pet owner was skeptical of the whole fireworks idea.  "The birds aren't really stupid.  They're just going to move to another pond," she said.  "It just seems crackers to me."

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Sandra Bernhard (circa 1990)

Sandra Bernhard is kind of crackers herself.  She was brilliantly weird in the brilliantly weird Martin Scorsese movie, King of Comedy (which starred Robert DeNiro and Jerry Lewis), and I'll never forget her fabulous 1990 movie, Without You I'm Nothing (based on her one-woman off-Broadway show). 

Click here to buy Without You I'm Nothing from Amazon.

DeNiro and Bernhard in "King of Comedy"

Bernhard proved once and for all that a female comedian could be as dirty and funny as any male comedian.  One-trick-pony female comedians like Sarah Silverman, Chelsea Handler, and Amy Schumer may match Sandra Bernhard when it comes to talking dirty, but Bernhard was a much more interesting and multifaceted performer than her wannabes.

Click here to listen to "Manic Superstar," which was released on Bernhard's 1991 album, Excuses for Bad Behavior (Part One).  

Amboy Dukes – "You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire" (1968)

What you gonna do 

When the bubble bursts?

[NOTE: I never in my wildest dreams envisioned having NINE grandchildren (and counting).  Quite a few 2 or 3 lines posts feature one or more of them – here's the first one to do so, which was originally published in August 2016.]

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On July 22 at 6:00 am, my very pregnant daughter Sarah woke up and immediately knew it was time to eight, skate, and donate to the hospital before her bubble burst and my first grandson fell out.

So she and husband drove to the hospital (which is twenty minutes away if all goes well), dealt with the usual I-need-to-see-your-insurance-card hospital bureaucrats, and got to a labor and delivery just in time for Sarah to deliver my grandson Jack at 7:10 am.

My grandson Jack on the day he was born

There was no time for the hospital staff to give Sarah an epidural anesthetic, so she had to tough it out au naturel.

But she handled the whole thing – as she had handled her entire pregnancy – with total aplomb.  In fact, I think it’s fair to say that Sarah is about the aplombest new mother you ever did see.

I for one was very happy at Sarah and Jack’s timing because I was about to leave town and drive to Cape Cod for my annual summer vacation.  My grandson’s birth delayed my departure by a few hours, but I didn’t complain a bit.  (My mother’s comment on my decision to hit the road: “How could you leave that pretty little boy?”)

The three-week-old Jack

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I thought long and hard about what song to feature in this very important 2 or 3 lines.

I could have featured one of the 89 songs I found with “Jack” in the title: e.g., Billy Joel’s “Captain Jack,” The Who’s “Happy Jack,” Ray Charles’s “Hit the Road, Jack,” John Mellencamp’s “Jack and Diane,” or the Rolling Stones’ “Jumpin’ Jack Flash,” to name just a few.

Another option would have been to feature a song by a musician who shared Jack’s July 22 birthday: e.g., George Clinton, Bobby Sherman, or Don Henley.

The lyrics of “You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire” are very marginally related to the content of today’s 2 or 3 lines, but that’s enough given what a killer song it is.

*  * * * *

The Amboy Dukes are best-known for their 1968 hit, “Journey to the Center of the Mind.”  It was what I like to call a stick of dynamite.

The band’s follow-up single, “You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire,” which failed to crack the top 100 in the U.S., is almost as good.  But it had totally escaped my notice until a couple of weeks ago.

“You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire” was never released on an Amboy Dukes LP, but was included as a bonus track when the group’s second album was released on CD.  (Saints be praised!)

Click here to listen to “You Talk Sunshine, I Breathe Fire.”

Ian Dury & the Blockheads – "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" (1979)

Hit me with your rhythm stick!

Hit me! Hit me!

Das ist gut!  C'est fantastique!

[NOTE: If you read the 2000-plus 2 or 3 lines posts that have been published to date, you’ll learn a lot – as the following "Golden Decade" post from July 2013 proves.]

Polio epidemics were unknown before the 20th century.  But improvements in urban sanitation practices – especially better sewage disposal and cleaner water supplies – reduced childhood exposure to the polio virus.  That meant that fewer children developed a natural immunity to the disease.

The year I was born – 1952 – was the peak year for polio in the United States.  There were 58,000 reported cases of the disease that year, which resulted in 3145 deaths and 21,269 cases of mild to severe paralysis.

Elvis gets his polio shot

The Salk and Sabin polio vaccines began to be widely administered shortly after that, and there were fewer than a tenth as many polio cases in the U.S. in 1957 as there had been in 1952.  In 1961, there were only 161 recorded cases.

The Americas and Europe were declared polio-free in 1994 and 2002, respectively.  Today, polio remains endemic only in Nigeria, Pakistan, and Afghanistan.

*     *     *     *     *

A number of well-known musicians who came of age in the sixties – including Judy Collins, Donovan, Neil Young, and Joni Mitchell – were infected with polio when they were children.   

Mitchell was bedridden for weeks, and was told she might need an iron lung to breathe.  Her unusual guitar chord technique is a result of her left hand being weakened by polio.

An iron lung ward in Boston in the early 1950s

The British musician Ian Dury, who was born in London in 1942, contracted polio during a 1949 epidemic.  After spending 18 months in a hospital, Dury was sent to the Chailey Heritage Craft school for disabled children for three and a half years.  

The staff at Chailey didn't believe in babying their patients – austerity and discipline were the order of the day.  And so, according to Dury, was sexual abuse.  "A lot of the staff were pervs," he said.  "No buggery, but a lot of enforced wanking."  

Click here to read an article that describes the late Dury (he died of cancer in 2000) as "the highest profile visibly physically disabled pop artist in Britain," and credits him with producing "a compelling body of works exploring the experiences of disability." 

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The most famous – or infamous – of Dury's many original songs that reference physical or mental disability is "Spasticus Autisticus," which was released in 1981.  

The United Nations had declared 1981  to be the "International Year of Disabled Persons."   Dury wasn't buying that.

"Spasticus Autisticus" is a shoutout to "you out there in Normal Land."  It doesn't shy away from the embarrassing physical limitations that result from polio and other crippling diseases:

I widdle when I piddle

'Cause my middle is a riddle . . .

I dribble when I nibble

And I quibble when I scribble

It was all too much for the BBC, which declined to play the song.  

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"Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick" went to number one on the British singles chart in January 1979.  (It displaced "Y.M.C.A." by the Village People, which is reason enough for all of us to be eternally grateful to Dury).

Ian Dury

The song's music video represented a "coming out" for Dury.  He appeared in it wearing a sleeveless T-shirt, which revealed his polio-withered left arm.  

The physical ravages of polio didn't prevent Dury from being quite the ladies' man.  He got married to a fellow Royal College of Art student in 1967, and fathered two children.  In 1973, he went to London to pursue a musical career, and cohabited with a teenaged fan for several years.  In 1987, he hooked up with actress Jane Horrock.  (The two had met while performing together in a London play.  Dury also appeared in several movies in the eighties and nineties.)  And in 1996, after learning he had colorectal cancer, Dury married sculptor Sophy Tilson.  

Dury was a brilliant and distinctive lyricist.  Andrew Lloyd Webber asked him to write the lyrics for Cats, but Dury turned him down. 

"I can't stand his music," he told an interviewer.  "I hate Andrew Lloyd Webber.  He's a wanker, isn't he? . . . [E]verytime I hear 'Don't Cry for Me, Argentina' I feel sick, it's so bad."

Click here to listen to "Hit Me With Your Rhythm Stick."

Click here to buy it from Amazon.